Big Decisions

Well, it has been a big week! We've been doing a lot of hard thinking and made some big decisions. After my dramatic day last Saturday (see post titled Emotional Stuff) and the consequences one bad day had to my store, I have decided to drop back from being assistant manager to casual much earlier than I planned. My manager and I have had a few discussions this week about my performance over the last few weeks and we both agree that I'm not as focussed on the store at the moment as I need to be. Work had already advertised my position and applications were to close on Friday. The position was not due to start until mid August but now I think they are going to close applications early and try and interview people as soon as possible. It may still take a couple of weeks after that for the new person to start because they will most likely fill my position internally and therefore have to find a replacement for their job too. I'm not sure how many hours I will get as a casual but I also have the opportunity to work in other stores besides Chermside if they need me. The pay rate is also a bit higher so hopefully we wont be missing out too much in the long run. I have been getting quite stressed at work which is certainly not good for B or for me. So when it started contributing to me losing sleep Daniel and I decided something needed to be done sooner rather than later. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders and also feel much better about having to maybe do a few more weeks as assistant manager. Going back to casual doesn't affect my maternity leave except that for the next few weeks I won't get paid sick leave if I can't come in and I don't work up any more annual leave. I think these are small sacrifices as I hardly ever take a sick day and I've already got about 26 days annual leave owing which will be paid out when I go on maternity leave. Overall I'm happy with the decision and I think Daniel is too.

When discussing me cutting back my hours and therefore my income, we had a think about where else we could save some money. We have a friend who is a mortgage broker and invited him over tonight to work out if we could save money if we changed our mortgage. It turns out we're with a really good bank (BankWest) and what our best option is just to change our home loan to another one that they offer. This will give us a better rate and therefore reduce our weekly repayments and cut our monthly bank fees for having an offset facility that we really don't use effectively. It also saves a lot of hassle of having to change banks with everyone. So that's pretty exciting too and we're getting the paperwork tomorrow.

In other news, you'll all be glad to hear that my skin is doing a lot better since I got my new cream. It hasn't been itchy at all and the rash itself is clearing up nicely. So it was worth forking out the $125 to see the specialist to give me a prescription my GP could have given me. Well at least I'm not scratching till I bleed!

Finally, in some very exciting news, our dear friend John who moved to Canada a few years ago achieved his dream this weekend. His barbershop quartet WON the International Barbershop Convention in Salt Lake City. This is the highest you can go in the Barbershop world. Daniel and I have known John a very long time and are extremely proud of his achievements. I know he reads this site regularly so I just wanted to publically say congratulations once again!

That's all for now.